E-borders could be used to enforce fines

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The government's e-borders project could be used for more than preventing movement of criminals in and out of the country, a Home Office document has shown.

Last week, the Home Office released statistics showing that the initial phases of the e-borders project had caught over a thousand absconded criminals. In that same impact assessment report, the Home Office outlines two alternatives for border control. The first would maintain the status quo, meaning agencies would have to work independently and request information from airlines and carriers as they go. The second suggests centralising borders data into a single facility to permit data sharing. The report recommends the latter option.

The first option would cost the government £228 million and industry £24 million over 10 years, while the second option would increase costs to £1.2 billion and £242 million respectively.

That option would open up new uses for Project Semaphore, as the £1.2 billion database-driven electronic border project is known, where it could also be used to battle illegal immigrants and criminals as well as provide movement records for people falsely stating their residency status to cheat the NHS, benefits and tax systems. It could also be used to enforce unpaid fines, the document said.

However, for the data to be used in these ways, new secondary legislation must be introduced, the document said, a move that was criticised by digital rights campaigners.

"What I think this... demonstrates is that advances in data collection, storage and mining have the power to fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and state," said Becky Hogge, of campaigning organisation The Open Rights Group. "Rather than introducing these sorts of powers via secondary legislation, there needs to be a full public debate about data sharing in this country."

If passed, such legislation would mean the e-borders data could be used to enforce the payment of hundred of millions of pounds in fines. "Whilst not a key e-borders priority, e-borders could also contribute to compliance on fine enforcement, if provisions were issued prohibiting travel overseas whilst fines remained unpaid and confiscation orders undischarged," the report said. "There are totals of £487 million in outstanding fines and £300 million in unpaid confiscation orders."

The data collected would also allow the government to more easily identify people falsely claiming to be non-residents to avoid paying UK income tax, or those who access social security benefits despite no longer living in the country - a problem worth some £2 billion annually. "Although the impact of e-borders in countering this fraud has yet to be quantified the benefit of even a small reduction is significant," the report said.

The data held by the wide-ranging project could assist government in a range of enforcement issues. "More widely, e-borders will enable government properly to enforce a whole range of court orders forbidding travel outside the country and enable more informed decisions to be made on bail decisions," the report said. "As well as being a standard condition on criminal sentences, it may well also be used in civil cases including child custody disputes - for example, in respect of children taken out of the UK/brought into the UK in breach of custody arrangements."

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